Got get an IRC you two.

You should still reboot your Linux server regularly. While the updates can run in place, running processes will not pick up the changes until restarted. And when you update the kernel you also need to reboot the system to pick it up. While there are distributions out there that have systems in place to auto restart affected services and can upgrade kernels in place (e.g. Ubuntu with the right licence), it is still recommended to reboot every now and then. My server is set up to reboot once a month and after every kernel update.

Yes, but how often does that happen to the average person?

ufw makes it way nicer to use tho. I only use iptables as I have a configuration script I wrote way back in the day.

You can set up firewall rules that limit connections to certain ports. For example, you can disallow connections to everything but port 22 (which ssh runs on) to only allow access to the ssh server from outside. Same with VPN.

Read up on ufw (or iptables if you want to do it lower level and have a drink on hand).